"Blacken the sky Can't stand to see the sun The truth of light Reveals the hatred that has won" – I Saw The End by Pallbearer

Monthly Archives: October 2015

If you are looking for something to assault your ear drums, pummel your tiny brain and squash your bowels in a frenzy of metal and death, then you would be looking in the wrong place. Instead, Finnish post metal band Owler is here to assault you in an entirely different way than what you are use to. Without being a pummeling discharge of fiery flames and destruction, Owler slows things down a bit to create atmosphere which allows them to tell their story. Through four songs you get twenty-five minutes of post apocalyptic metal which you can follow a story, sing to, and head bang to all in the same EP.

Through the entirety of Waves you get a good mixture of melodious harmonies as well as that crunching riffage that everyone so craves. The very beginning of this EP begins with a song titled Throes which begins with a soulful intro that melts right into the aforementioned crunching riffs. However, even with the heavier riffs that come into play the song never breaks into death metal or thrash or anything else, it just simply sticks true to its original formula of being hard hitting as well as entirely melodic.

Waves covers a lot of different spectrums with only four songs. Each song is melodic, symphonic, packs a ton of atmosphere, has heavier riffage than what you may normally expect, has silky cleans as well as gravely growls. If you are a fan of all of those things just mentioned in the list or even just a couple, you are bound to find yourself enjoying this EP.

There is a great balance that Owler strikes between the heavy and melodic. Within the same song you will witness a smooth transition between a heavier and harder sound, and a softer more symphonic sound. The longer run times of these songs allows them to mix both the heavier elements with the more melodious ones to create a story and tell it very well.

The four songs on Waves are very well executed and crafted. Owler has an innate ability to create wonderful soundscapes and stories no matter how dark they may be. Waves tends to suck you in and engulf you in its beautiful darkness. Before you know it, you are already all the way through the EP. As mentioned before, Owler does a great job mixing a lot of different elements within their music. You can growl along, you can sing along to the sweet cleans, you can headbang to the heavy, and you can get lost in an almost dream like state through the symphonic parts. Waves has everything that you would wish to hear, and with everything that is going on in this EP, Owler executes it perfectly. If you are wondering what post metal is all about, I would suggest starting by listening to Owler, or if you are already a fan of post metal or just metal in general, then Owler is what you need as well.

Do you like things that make you entirely uncomfortable? If your answer just so happened to be yes, then boy do I have a treat for you. Open Tomb hails from New Zealand and plays an excruciatingly slow style of doom. Doom generally is slow, but this a special type of fuzzed out glacier slowness. The music is so slow in fact you end up feeling like you move back in time instead of forward. On Dead Weight you get three tracks, but over the three tracks you end up sitting in a mind numbing stasis for a good thirty-eight minutes.

You heard me right, thirty-eight pain staking minutes. Over those minutes you get subjected to incredibly suffocating music, and if there was any other way to put it I would but there isn’t. The music that Open Tomb makes is meant to drive you to the brink of insanity and even give you a little nudge off the edge of the cliff just so you dive face first experiencing first hand what it is like to be driven to madness.

Even as slow as they are, Open tomb is bone crushingly heavy. The overwhelming slow style of play mixed with overly fuzzed out guitars is what makes this release as heavy as it is. Dead Weight is the equivalent of having an anvil placed on your chest and that anvil is slowly sinking little by little into your chest cracking your sternum. Sounds pleasant right? Well it shouldn’t, because the amount of pain that you experience through these three tracks is tremendous.

Thirty-eight minutes over three songs sounds like a lot, and it truly is, but with the terribly slow speed at which each song is played at feels like Dead Weight lasts a life time. Open Tomb is frightening for other reasons as well. The content of this release is sickening to the core as it oozes black blood and chunks of flesh and excrement.

The overall sound through and through is dirty as each riff is filled with an incredible amount of fuzz, the drums pound away at your sanity and the bass provides a thick and sturdy back bone. On top of the noisy filth, the lead singer screams his way through each song sounding as demonic and possessed as humanly (or demonly?) possible.

The sound of Open Tomb is that of death itself. The music consumes you, bringing you into its dark lair just to strip the flesh off of your bone. If organ stopping, glacier slowness is what gets you riled up, then Open Tomb and their new release Dead Weight should be right up your alley. Listen at your discretion, but just be ware that the sanity you came in with, will not leave with you.

If I did my math properly and I know that I did, then that means that Finland has the most melodic death metal bands per square riff than anywhere else in the world. Now, with that being stated, Forte Ruin is a melodic death metal band from Lahti, Finland and they recently released their self titled EP. Within this self titled EP of theirs you can find and will find three very well written and executed tracks. For only coming around in 2011 they sound as though they are seasoned veterans. Within the self titled release, they take a genre and twist it and bend it to their will to create a unique sound all their own.

There are many melodic death metal bands out there now, and Forte Ruin have joined the cage match of melodic death supremacy. While they have a long way to the title fight, their self titled EP is not a bad offering what so ever.

From the very beginning of the EP you quickly realize that Forte Ruin is not here to play and they are not here just to be a flash in the pan. They lay all of their cards on the table and leave nothing unsaid, and leave no punches pulled.

Not only can this release knock you back on your hind quarters, it can also enchant you and suck you in. At the very end of this offering, you feel and know that you need more as three songs are not enough to satisfy your melodic death metal hunger pains. Once you hear the closing track Enter the Masquerade ends you quickly feel the need to press play again.

The only thing on this release that was recorded in a studio were the drums, which means that everything else was recorded by the band themselves, and that within itself is great because the production is crisp and clean. Every aspect of this album is executed very excellently, no detail is looked over and nothing feels forced as Forte Ruin as a whole has mastered their craft. The riffs are powerful and have that death metal chugging to them when needed but the guitars also break into blistering solos that are well placed and called upon when needed. The drums pound away in a blistering fervor but never fly off the rails as the bass provides a nice back bone for each song. All the while the keyboards provide a nice atmosphere and add an extra layer to each of the three songs that ties in very well and adds an extra layer. On top of everything, the vocalist does a seamless job of switching between screams that are in the mid range and melodious cleans. Now don’t be afraid of the cleans as they are probably the most potent and dangerous part of the entire EP. They suck you in, get you to memorize the lyrics and get you to sing along. If anything you should fear these cleans, not loathe them.

Forte Ruin has crafted an excellent metal brew for you to sip on. Their self titled release is metallic, it is hard hitting, memorable and catchy. Through three songs Forte Ruin make you want more, and make you continue pressing that play button. You can headbang as well as sing until your heart is content with this EP, so I suggest you do so.

Earlier I was fortunate enough to sit down with Marlow and Lowell from Xul. The re-release of their critically acclaimed debut Malignance is right around the corner and on the tail of their EP Extinction Necromance released this year they will be releasing their second full length next year in 2016. Without further delay, I present the interview with Marlow Deiter and Lowell Winters.

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Your debut in 2012 has gotten some pretty high praise and has been critically acclaimed. Did you ever think that you guys would make something that has had such high praises among the music/metal world?

No It’s kind of surprising. We started out just having fun making music that we all wanted to listen to. Now we’ve been doing it for 7 years and we just keep working at it because it’s all we really want to do and we’re starting to get some attention for it.

With your second full length coming out next year, was there ever any pressure to try to top the success of your debut, or out do yourselves this time around?

It’s hard to say. We don’t necessarily want to out do ourselves musically because the songs on Malignance will always be what they are and someone might like those songs more than anything else we release afterwards and that’s totally okay but we want to write songs that allow us to grow as a band and as individuals. We have all improved at our instruments since the recording of Malignance and with that, our ability to write songs that resonate with us.

There are a lot of different components and elements that you add into your music such as: black metal, death metal, you’re technical and you add some atmospheric bits as well. Who are some of your influences musically to create such a diverse sound?

Oh man there are just so many. Haha. Obviously Behemoth and Dissection. Those ones are brought up all the time. But to elaborate a bit further, Emperor, Death (we’re listening to Scream Bloody Gore right now), Enslaved, Decapitated, Wintersun, Satyricon, Darkthrone, Abigail Williams, Ghoul, At the Gates, Obscura and more recently bands like Beyond Creation, Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Carach Angren…we could keep going but you get the idea that we have a fairly wide variety of bands that inspire us musically.

All very excellent bands! Can you tell me a little bit about the song writing and recording process?

Well its changed a bit over the years but typically Bill and Wallace will come up with a few riffs to throw together, they’ll show the rest of us and then we toss some ideas around. Then Bill and Wallace will make a rough recording of just the guitar tracks that the rest of us can write and practice to. Then the song will change a hundred times until it’s just right Haha. Actually we feel like were getting better at composing and that it’s become less tedious. We usually have the songs pretty much stage ready by the time we go to record. Very few changes are made during the recording process.

What would you say the biggest obstacles for you would be during the writing and recording process?

Having a day job Haha. Writing has never really been a problem for us, that’s the fun part. As far as recording goes it has been difficult at times to get our vision across.

Having a day job certainly is a big draw back, I suffer from that as well haha.With all of the different elements that you guys do add into your music, is it difficult at times to strike a balance and find that perfect cohesive mix?

Yeah but sometimes you don’t realize that until afterwards and sometimes songs don’t make the cut. We’ve never been scared to step out of our comfort zone or even the comfort zone of our fans. We like to explore new pathways and sometimes the path isn’t pleasant but it’s another path that we’ve walked. Venomous Inquisition is a song that originally didn’t make the cut for Malignance but now its our most recent recording as a bonus track on the rerelease so you never know what to expect when you write a song.

You guys have been active for a while now-seven years as you mentioned-did you ever think that you would become somewhat of a household name in metal?

Not really but it wasn’t totally out of our scope of thinking. We’re in a band that wants to play live in front of crowds of people. We’re working towards touring the world playing metal music.

Do people ever stop you guys on the street and say “Hey it’s the guys from Xul” and ask for autographs or any of that fun business?

Ha no street autographs no. Maybe the odd one at a show. We live in a pretty small town so we pretty much know all the metalheads around.

I just have three standard questions left. The first being: Which of your band shirts is your most coveted?

People really like the Extinction Necromance T-shirts at the moment but there are probably just as many people walking around with our old shirts that had the leprous sorcerers on them. Both pieces were done by Remy C. of Headsplit Design as is the new Malignance artwork which we’ll have shirts for very soon.

While growing up which album(s) were your most coveted? Metal or otherwise.

Combining the likes of death metal, grind and thrash creates a wonderfully accosting assault, and since Brain Famine combines all of those elements they themselves have created something that is entirely butchering. Even though Exploding Paranoid Universe is their very first full length, Brain Famine sound like they have been sitting on it for a while, fine tuning it until it was just the right amount of destruction and chaos. Through the ten tracks that are on this debut you end up violently banging your head to the point where your brain explodes. And at the very end of Exploding Paranoid Universe it would be shocking to find out that you have not destroyed your house in violent spastic outbursts.

The particular style of metal that Brain Famine plays is intense, and they may even be disappointed in themselves if at the end of the record your organs haven’t burst and your brain hasn’t boiled. And if those two things have not happened by the ending of Implement Systematic Dogmacide then you are warranted more listens until organs burst and your brain catches fire.

Combining thrash, death metal, and grind sounds like something that could go completely wrong in a heart beat. And by that I mean that it could have sounded something like two trains colliding head on with each other. However, Brain Famine doesn’t sound like a train wreck. In fact, Exploding Paranoid Universe is a wonderful mix of all three genres. The music is executed very well, the musicianship is tight and the song writing ability is great.

As chaotic as Brain Famine sounds, they are a controlled blast of C4. Throughout the entire album they straddle the line between blistering chaos and controlled chaos, and for the most part they do a great job of mixing both control with the insane.

Exploding Paranoid Universe is a dark album filled with visceral hatred and pure energy. Once this debut gets rolling there is nothing you can do to stop it from crushing you, squeezing the life out of you as you gasp for air. Brain Famine is a powerful grinding assault to say the least. The terrifying assault begins with the ever shredding riffs which are backed up by the pounding and bone cracking drums as well as the thick spine snapping bass. On top of the expert musicianship, the vocals are menacing as they are barked and screamed at you from the get go.

Every element that went into the making of this debut is put to good use here. And with each element being just as fiery and combustive as the last, Exploding Paranoid Universe is a terrifying nerve shredding experience. The very ethos of Brain Famine is grinding madness, and that is exactly what they bring to the table with their debut. Every song hits hard, shreds, and decimates lives in the process. Exploding Paranoid Universe is sure to make the crazy in you come out, and every once in a while it’s good to have that psycho side come out.

Maybe some of you would think that sixteen minutes isn’t nearly enough time to be tortured, but you would be wrong. Grilled Human Brain hails from the most sickening and perverted reaches of Italy to bring you Horrific Subjugation. Slam as a genre is most notorious for gruesome lyrics and a complete bludgeoning style of play. And much like the rest of heavy metal, slam doesn’t take itself entirely seriously. Slam is overtly gory, grotesque and is here to shock and induce vomiting. And while you are spewing putrid chunks of bile and last night’s dinner, Grilled Human Brain is standing over you with a mallet smashing you over the head.

After smashing your wonderfully bright pink brain, Grilled Human Brain feasts on your remains. Showing no remorse, Grilled Human Brain and their album Horrific Subjugation dig right in gorging on your sickeningly diseased skin and putrid flesh. The more rancid you are the better, and the slower the kill and torture the more satisfying.

Slam has been a mainstay now in heavy metal for a decade or more whether you like it or not, and the slam genre is not about to bow out any time soon either. With its quickening rise to popularity, slam has made a name for itself as a whole over the past few years. At first the genre was hidden away like that red headed step child that you like to beat over the cranium with a two by four, but now it is out in the light and there is nothing you can do to stop its rampage.

Grilled Human Brain joins that rampage and the ever growing existence of slam. Born once as a putrid and vile creature, the genre has grown into something completely respectable. As big as it is now, it will only grow bigger, and it will only devour more victims.

Grilled Human Brain has only joined the ranks recently however. And as a new inductee, they follow a pretty standard formula. Throughout the sixteen minute torture session, you don’t exactly hear anything that is new or fresh. As a matter of fact, everything that is brought forth to you is pretty standard.

Even though the music is pretty standard, that is just enough to get anyone that is remotely involved or interested in slam to check the album out. “Horrific Subjugation” doesn’t have to revolutionary to garner attention, it just has to be heavy and intestine lacerating and that is the exact formula that Grilled Human Brain follows.

Throughout the entirety of Horrific Subjugation there are completely down tuned riffs, violent slams, slaughtering rhythms, skull cracking bass lines and organ rupturing vocals. Everything that is needed within a slam release is present here, and anyone that is a fan of slam would be foolish not to have this on their shelf.

Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation among others started something that was quite revolutionary for metal at the time. Twenty plus years ago no one realized that brutal death metal as a genre would expand quite as big as it has. And with that being said, here we are some twenty plus years later and brutal death metal is still very much alive and breathing. Hypoxia hail from New York and play a visceral brand of old school brutal death metal. The style of brutal death that they play is reminiscent of the bands that began the genre, and Hypoxia waves that old school brutal death banner very high.

If you like interludes or fillers, then you had better look elsewhere since there are no frills and or fillers present within Despondent Death. From beginning to end Despondent Death is pure brutality. Every song that is featured on this release is blasting and purely destructive.

Despondent Death showcases ten songs with the outro aptly titled Dismal being the most calm track in the entire album. As soon as Schizophrenic Killing begins there is nothing that you can possibly do to stop this pummeling and torturous chaos.

Despondent Death doesn’t exactly sneak up on you either, nor does it have to. It is such a brutish album that complete and overwhelming technicality isn’t needed to create such a monstrosity. In fact, Hypoxia stick to original brutal death plan and attack, shred, bloody anything that gets in its way. Now don’t get me wrong. The music is technical in its own right, but it isn’t tech death. This is straight up and down raw punishment that takes absolutely no prisoners.

Flying that unwavering flag of hatred, Hyoxia punish and bludgeon anyone or anything that opposes them. Despondent Death is reminiscent of the monster that use to hide in your closet, or the stalker that haunts you today. Hypoxia is big and brutish and they’re not afraid to flex every death metal muscle that they have. Hypoxia is that ax wielding psycho that you see standing outside of your window every night. Despondent Death is a monolith, it is a force against all forces, a slayer of false idols.

With all of their might, Hypoxia try to tear the heads off of the innocent and corrupt any souls that need corrupting. And through the course of the album, Hypoxia stay true to their roots. They never waver from the type of band that they truly are by adding elements that are entirely unnecessary. There is nothing present within Despondent Death that would muddle up what Hypoxia’s message is. Everything here is one hundred percent true and gut ripping brutal death metal.

Hypoxia realizes their conquest of the brutal death kingdom with face melting riffs, the occasional guitar solo, sledge hammer heavy drums, a bass that rips and tears at your tender flesh and vocals that sound completely monstrous. The main staple of brutal death vocals is something that is entirely guttural, and for the majority of the time can’t be understood. The powerful organ rupturing vocals of Hypoxia display some diversity as the vocals range from demolishing mids to volcanic lows.

The album runs smooth as all of the songs have the same purpose, and that purpose is to destroy your life. Hypoxia is a wrecking ball of hate destroying anything that dares to come near them, and Despondent Death as a whole is complete force to be reckoned with. So enter if you dare, see if you leave with your head on your shoulders.

For those of you that are just tuning in and finding out what Monday Morning Mayhem is all about; Monday Morning Mayhem is a safe haven for metal heads. It is a playlist for dreary Monday mornings. It is something else to listen to on the way to work other than that awful rubbish they play on the radio. And whether you are just tuning in or you are a current reader, below are some more bands to add to that playlist of yours. So read on, and please enjoy!

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Start the day off with the blackest cup of coffee you can make while listening to one of the blackest and darkest bands you can find. Mortuus Umbra is that incredibly dark band that I am speaking of. While listening to Catechism there is nothing that you can do other than succumb to the darkness. It swallows you whole engulfing you in shrouds of darkness and chaos, and while the fiery flames of darkened hell fire flick at your skin you realize that there is nowhere to go, there is no escape from something so bleak and dark. Catechism doesn’t get off to a blistering start, so your descent into madness is a slow one at first until Mortuus Umbra kicks into high gear playing that chaotic unfiltered style of black metal that everyone has come to know. Instead of everything being completely skin peeling all at once, and instead of the music sounding like one sonic wall of noise, Mortuus Umbra refines their brand of noise making everything coherent and cohesive. There are four songs present here on Catechism and each song switches from pure blasphemous destruction, to a slower more brooding darkness. Mortuus Umbra displays a great ability to create bleak soundscapes, making you feel as though you are either going through hell or being dragged down to hell. The musicianship along with the song writing ability is great, and this four track release is a must hear for anyone even remotely interested in black metal.

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Transitioning from the utterly bleak and dark, to utterly grotesque and destructive I bring Traumatomy to your attention. Monolith of Absolute Suffering is their newest album that sports eight head splitting songs. As you can probably conclude from the cover art, there is nothing in here other than a terrifying assault on your ear drums. Nothing here slows down save for the occasional slam, but even those aren’t that slow. Slamming brutal death metal has to be one of the most colorful genres in metal, and while the artwork is certainly a part of that, the musicianship and the lyrics are also a huge part of that. Being one of-if not the most-disgusting genres out there is something to be proud of. Slamming brutal death metal is something to be reckoned with as it has grown exponentially over the last ten or so years. With that being said, Traumatomy is a great example of what slamming brutal death should be. They mix in equal parts of death metal, brutal death and slam elements to create something entirely raw, visceral and completely punishing. If for whatever reason you are curious as to what pain feels like through music, then just listen to Traumatomy. The blasting brutality leaves you full of puncture wounds, bruises and permanent brain damage. Imagine your head being held up to a circular saw that is cutting and chipping away exposing your brain until you die from excess bleeding or shock from all of the horrifying pain you are being put through. Then imagine your body being even further emaciated, being torn limb from limb and thrown in a putrid dumpster somewhere in the most disgusting part of town. That is what slamming brutal death sounds like. And for Traumatomy, that is what they embody, they embrace the sickness, and on their newest release Monolith of Absolute Suffering the musicianship is great, the vocals are incredibly guttural, and the slams blast and crack your limbs leaving you helpless. Pick this up if you dare, but you’ll be glad you took the beating for it.

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Continuing the trend of unrelenting and punishing metal, we continue the trek to Dallas, Texas where Chemicaust is found. As Empires Fall is Chemicaust’s new release which features five songs that rip and tear while playing an accosting brand of thrash infused death metal. With Chemicaust you get everything that you love and crave about thrash metal with just a little bit more oomph, which is where the death metal comes in. Every song here thrashes and writhes, creating a certain controlled chaos sound. As mentioned you get every aspect of thrash metal that you love, so with that being said you get the tumultuous drumming, the fiery riffs and flaming guitar solos. The death metal intensity comes in with gravely roars and the occasional more stomping riff. Whichever way that you decide to slice it, each song is whiplash inducing, neck cracking goodness. Through the five songs on this release you feel as though you’ve gone through the ringer, then back in for more punishment, because you’re that sick and because this brand of thrash is intoxicating. Pure fury, and an unrelenting desire to make you headbang is what makes up Chemicaust, and if you are in the mood for a good headbanging time then these guys are the right fit for you.

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Jumping from the U.S. over to Germany we end the list with a band called Kaltetod and their release Zwang. Kaltetod plays a mystifying brand of black metal. The band itself is mysterious and that carries over into their music. However, black metal is all about the occult and mystique, so the more mysterious the better. As bleak as black metal can get, Kaltetod reaches that level. With a lo-fi approach to their music, Kaltetod holds true to traditional black metal stylings. Each of the four songs are dissonant treks across barren wastelands, and to make it feel even more like a trek, each song save for one surpasses the eight minute mark with one surpassing the eleven minute mark. When black metal is talked about, words like cold, dissonant, and bleak pop up a lot and that is because black metal is meant to make you feel alone and cold in the world, it isn’t meant to be inviting. And if those things among a few others is what black metal is meant to be, then Kaltetod embraces each of those elements and created Zwang. Zwang embodies what the black metal forefathers had meant black metal to be, and they meant for it to be as disparaging and cold as possible and Kaltetod hits all of those marks on this release.

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I hope this week’s Monday Morning Mayhem has provided you with enough info to help with the Monday morning slump. Enjoy, and keep headbanging!

All hail the king of wolves, Wolf King! Wolf King slithers from the darkest depths of the bay area in California. Bitter Bones is what looks like their first full length release and within this sordid pile of metal is nine flesh ripping songs. Wolf King plays metal in the vein of blackened hardcore, and it certainly is blackened to the core. There is everything that you need here between the two genres as Wolf King mixes and mashes them together quite nicely. Bitter Bones offers you the typical smash mouth take no prisoners onslaught which is then injected with poisonous black metal which gives you the spastic hate filled screeching that is black metal.

With combining hardcore and black metal-which seems to be all more relevant now-you create a sound entirely unique. Black metal is already chaotic and at times sounds like no one really knows how to play their instruments as everyone seems content on just thrashing about like mad men. While that isn’t true here since everyone does know how to play their instruments very well, that chaotic blackened energy is still very present, and mixing that with the bombastic play that is hardcore, you end up coming up with Wolf King.

While there are two very metallic and fiery genres at work here, Wolf King incorporate a little bit of the black metal’s atmospheric elements. There are some melancholy bits just like at the end of What is Lef” which creates a certain mood of darkness and sadness. All throughout this release the atmosphere seemingly stays the same, and that atmosphere is one of destruction, bitterness and complete and utter darkness.

Through Bitter Bones, Wolf King always keeps a razor sharp edge about them never wavering from their mission of decapitating you by the end of the nine songs. This blackened hardcore vessel of hate barrels through anything that is in its way and never slows or stops to apologize once. The fact that they are destroying your soul one serpentine riff at a time probably brings a certain joy to their day.

Each of the nine tracks cuts deeply leaving you to bleed black ooze. Leaving a listener no time to recover from such deep lacerations seems to be the theme with Bitter Bones. As one track closes there is another one that starts up immediately and resumes the cutting once more. All of the bombast and explosiveness begins with the opening track Death Swans. After about ten seconds of dissonant sounds, the songs then kicks into gear when the vocalist screams at you at the top of his lungs. After that moment you become sucked into the ever darkening vortex that is Bitter Bones.

Sinister riffs swirl around you frantically thrashing you upside the head whenever they can as the drums pick away at your skull. Once you are completely lobotomized, the bass rattles your brain out of your cranium with its thick bass lines and ever jarring presence. As sinister as the musicianship is, the vocalist ups the ante with the typical black metal blood curdling screams.

Bitter Bones is as dark and possessed as you would hope it would be. And as mentioned above, with the mixture of black metal and hardcore, there really is no escaping the clutches of such an explosive and visceral sound, so don’t try. The musicianship on this release is great, the vocals are marrow chilling, and the overall sound is bleak and dark. If you like pure chaos and destruction, then Wolf King is well worth the listen.

Beating Dead Meat sounds exactly like what death metal should do after it has killed you. That is what death metal should be about, hence the genre death metal. As a genre it is suppose to make you feel something pure and visceral, and it is suppose to make you feel like you’ve been through the ringer more than once. And after a few ringers death metal is meant to beat you some more, therefore the name Beating Dead Meat comes in. Beating Dead Meat hails from Finland and in case you were wondering they play death metal. Their eight track album is titled A Rude Awakening and the title of the album pretty much sums up what the album is about.

After being violently shaken and thrown from your regular every day life, Beating Dead Meat keep beating your lifeless brain into action. A very heavy metal wake up call is what A Rude Awakening is and it never stops throughout eight blistering songs.

Even though the majority of the songs presented on this album are of the faster paced romping variety, there are a couple of songs that slow it down a tiny bit to become a more stomping chugging death metal slaughterhouse. It isn’t like the songs slow down to something like doom, they just slow down toward a more mid paced beating.

Other than the couple of songs that are more in the chugging concrete breaking vein, the rest abide by the usual hammer away first ask questions later rule. If you were looking for frills, or anything else to work its way into this tight knit death metal group, you would be looking in the wrong place. There is nothing else, no other genres nothing that works its way into the primary focus of straight up death metal brutality.

Not only does Beating Dead Meat display great ability in being able to play at blinding speeds, but they keep everything tight and in check as well. They keep the riffs in line, the drumming is accurate and they even throw in a few guitar solos just to mix it up. The instrumentation is great as there is nothing that seems to be out of place all throughout the album and the structure of the album is well put together as well.

Each riff is fired at you like a machine gun, the drums blast and hatchet their way through your skull as the bass shakes your brain leaving it to be permanently bruised. All of those elements are constants as are the vocals that are screamed and belted out with the best of them. The vocalists throat has to be raw after such a gravely performance, and that gravely screech fits the rest of the music very well.

As a whole, A Rude Awakening is a well executed and well performed album hitting all of the death metal nerves that would render one helpless. But as far as death metal goes those nerves are something that you want to be hit, and Beating Dead Meat hit those death metal nerves.